Forty years on from the greatest try ever scored, the seven Barbarians
involved in the move reveal how it was scored.

Gareth Edwards's try is rugby's crowning glory. It was rugby In excelsis a magical template that each succeeding generation can only try and emulate. It may have been perfection but chasing perfection is still worthwhile. You can achieve great things on the way even if, ultimately, you fail in your objective.

Every time you watch a defender field the ball running backwards near his own line, don't you secretly hope for a replay of that miraculous counter-attack initiated by Phil Bennett and finished with such a flourish by "that fellow Edwards"?

You rehearse in your mind what could be and many of the players out there feel exactly the same. They soil chase that moment of perfection, and though very few come close, the rugby romantic is far from dead.

But it's more than even that. British rugby circa 1971-74 had it all. They remain the generation we must envy and admire. They were sublimely talented – that Barbarians team of 1973 includes at least six of my all time British and Irish XV and that would be eight if Mervyn Davies and Gerald Davies had not withdrawn.

They also enjoyed the best of what the amateur game had to offer. They were 'rock-and-roll' rugby players who helped forge the archetypal image of a "Rugby Man" that subsequent generations have embraced.

They beat everybody in magnificent style, they drank South Africa dry, threw beds out of hotel rooms with gay abandon while somehow avoiding punishment.

They went on three-day safaris between matches. Many managed to fit in a round of golf most weeks and were chased by beautiful women – hooker Ken Kennedy married Miss South Africa after one trip.

But that generation also enjoyed the grounding reality of jobs and lives away from sport. They were teachers, farmers, bank managers, lawyers, students, doctors and entrepreneurs.

They earned little from rugby bar a few expenses but were rich beyond compare in every other way.

As JPR Williams put it this week reviewing that Barbarians game: "We were amateurs having fun but we entertained the world. How good is that?"

They were and remain class individuals. They are the guardians of rugby's true spirit.

When chasing them this week for a few words the old camaraderie came pouring through.

Derek Quinnell briefly absented himself from a council meeting in Llanelli to help out while Gareth Edwards – a sprightly 65 – fought valiantly with his mobile on a ski lift in the French Alps after taking on a black run. And still he was hardly out of breath.

I caught John Pullin at a charity dinner which he was leaving early because it is the lambing season and he was needed back on his farm at 2am.

Pullin runs the closest English farm to Wales and takes good natured stick from the Barbarians' Welsh contingent, a sure sign that deep down the Welsh wish he was one of them.

He was an interloper in the otherwise all Welsh try from heaven during the 1973 match against the All Blacks.

Phil Bennett, Tommy David and John Dawes have spoken of that day hundreds of times but their eyes still light up every time they get asked about it. That Barbarians match – and Edwards' try in particular – was their present to the British rugby public.

As a fledgling schoolboy player I remember the frustration of reading daily about the fabulous 1971 Lions but never getting to see them on TV. The coverage just didn't exist.

To this day I have seen no footage of the famous day they defeated Wellington 47-9, the only performance that Dawes feels in comparable with the Barbarians game 40 years ago.

The British public, and particularly the Welsh fans around who the team was firmly based, clamoured to see them in action and on January 27 1973 their wishes were granted.

My memory of that game is of a massive excitement long before kick-off. Gareth Edwards talks of feeling unusually nervous and the need to deliver something special. And they did. And so did commentator Cliff Morgan, who was pressed into service at the last moment when Bill McLaren fell ill.

In his haste he left his notes and team sheet down in the press room and was stranded up in the TV gantry with just the microphone as company.

Still recovering from a stroke a year earlier and mindful that he had no crib sheet to rely on he had to concentrate hard to call the names correctly at the start of THAT try.

Professionally he knew he had to get it right.

As the move unfolds he relaxed and let those wonderful word tumble out: "A dramatic start. What a score. Oh that fellow Edwards. Who can stop a man like that?

"If the greatest writer of the written word would have written that story who would have believed it."